It’s grim down south. So Lisa McInerney is here to tell us, in the sequel to her award-winning 2015 debut novel The Glorious Heresies. The Blood Miracles continues the story of Ryan Cusack, a “mid-ladder dealer” in Cork, “a city run by the dangerous” – by “villains” who are “sometimes cloaked in virtue”. The glory days are over: “The scene choked on its vomit well before he was legal.” At night, the city is full of “empty buildings and gutted townhouses and the hush of those dreaming and dead drunk.” Ryan’s eye is drawn to “fag ash on the kerb”, to the heads of bus passengers “nodding as if their necks have snapped”.